Integrating Flex and Data Management Services with a Bpel process – What about Typed Collections?

As you can remember we’re working out a flex application using Data Management Services and Flex for the client-side and Bpel at server side.

During development I ran into a blocking issue regarding using typed collections in my ActionScript objects.

Why would I use Typed Arguments, Typed Collections or Typed Arrays ?My bpel process is using a Global Business Object (GBO), an XML Schema Definition, that defines the entire structure of the business objects I will need in the dossier management lifecycle. The bpel process will be cut pu into different sub processes which will define the needed process lifecycle for the dossier management system we’re building.

Of course this kind of business functionality will be handling master-detail data, e.g. a dossier has dossier_members and dossier_members have address_information.If we create a web service proxy client for our bpel process, the different objects used in this process will be defined as Java Objects. The hierarchical structure of the dossier-element or – object will be defined in the following manner:

ArgumentError: Error #2004: One of the parameters is invalid. atflash.net::NetConnection/flash.net:NetConnection::invokeWithArgsArray()

What does this mean?In order for this to work, you need to serialize, you’d need to override both the readExternal and writeExternal methods on both the client and server to take of the serialization of the typed collections yourself.

Practical Approach:

Implement the Externalizable Interface at Client- and Server-side

Overwrite the readExternal()- and writeExternal()-method in both your client and server classes which match (i.e. the read methods exactly match the write methods on both client and server). You need to serialize your fields as well as the source field of the ArrayCollection (it is an Array).

Take care of serialization and deserialization at server-side, use Externalizable Interface:

public function readExternal(input:IDataInput):void {trace(“***********Reading dossierMembers”);var array:Array = input.readObject() as Array;if (array!=null) {trace(“****Array received”);dossierMembers = new ArrayCollection();Loop over the array and add the arrayElements as typed objects to your collection in the following way:

dossierMembers.addItem(array.pop() as DossierMembers);

trace(“**Number of dossierMembers : ” + dossierMembers.length); }

public function writeExternal(output:IDataOutput):void {

trace(“Write ArrayCollection dossierMembers to array”);

var array:Array = new Array();

loop over object-array and add array-items to the collection: {

array.push(dossierMembers.getItemAt(i));

trace(dossierMembers.getItemAt(i).toString()); }

output.writeObject(array); trace(“Done”); } }

If you get random errors there will propbably be a mismatch between server- and client-side objects. The two approaches you can use are: print statements or stopping in your read/write external methods in the debugger. Step through actionscript classes and Java classes using Flex Debugging mode, so you can ensure that you are reading exactly what you are writing.

Hopefully this will help a lot of people facing the same issues regarding typed objects in an Adobe Flex Environment.